Saturday, February 18, 2012

Hitchhiking through Lovecraft Country: Innsmouth

A long time ago, I started to reread the various Chaosium
supplements dedicated to what Keith Herber christened “Lovecraft Country”—that
area around northeastern Massachusetts that served as home for many of Lovecraft’s
tales. Chaosium produced several supplements covering this area and I wanted to
revisit them as an excuse to immerse myself in something other than dank
dungeons and pointy-eared elves. The first revisit/review,H.P.Lovecraft’s Kingsport, covered the dual-stat supplement dedicated to
the home of the Strange High House in the Mist and The Festival. Now, at
long last, we move up the coast to visit decayed Innsmouth, a town that squats
along the shore like a bloated toad seething with evil.

The Call of Cthulhu supplement Escape
from Innsmouth was published in 1992 and is the fourth Lovecraft Country
book produced for the game. Written largely by Kevin A. Ross with supplemental
material by Keith Herber, Fred Behrendt, Scott Aniolowski, Mike Szymanski, Mark
Morrison, Penelope Love, John Tynes, and Richard Watts, Escape from Innsmouth provides setting information for Keepers
looking to introduce that sinister town into their campaign. Fittingly enough,
it is a hybrid book with the first half serving to describe Innsmouth like H.P.
Lovecraft’s Kingsport, Arkham Unveiled, and Return
to Dunwich do, and the second half acting as a short campaign centered
around the town. Escape from Innsmouth saw two editions (1992 and 1997), but
never received the “dual system” treatment that was extended to Arkham, Dunwich, and Kingsport.
Both editions are expensive on the secondhand market, with prices in the $75 to
$100+ range being common. This article is based on the first edition of the
book.

I must write that I approached with book with trepidation. The
Shadow over Innsmouth is one of my favorite Lovecraft tales and I find
the concepts and themes explored in the story both alluring and repulsive. Yet
the power of the story is in its mystery and I had two concerns for the
supplement: How would the town stand up to the harsh scrutiny a detailed
supplement would put it under and could it retain its secrets when it was
likely that the players themselves knew what went on in the shadows of
Innsmouth? I had my suspicions that it would fail on both these accounts. But
let’s see for ourselves, shall we?

Escape from Innsmouth
is divided into several chapters: Introduction,
Mysterious Innsmouth, Welcome to Innsmouth, The Shadow over Innsmouth, A
Guidebook to Innsmouth & Environs, Escape from Innsmouth, Raid on
Innsmouth, Keeper’s Aids, Supporting Character Sheets, and Sinister
Seeds.

The Introduction is but a single page,
serving to inform the reader that the book is but one of several featured in
the Lovecraft Country series, and that it takes much of its content from
Lovecraft’s tale, The Shadow over
Innsmouth, and the stories of August Derleth, with Ross adding his own
creations to the mix. The introductory section also establishes the book’s
place in the canonical Innsmouth timeline (after the events of The Shadow over Innsmouth but before the
government raid on the town), with suggestions on how to use the included
scenarios in conjunction with the rest of book to create a mini-campaign arc
between those two events. Lastly, the author thanks various people for their
contributions to the project.

Mysterious Innsmouth is dedicated to the history of the coastal
town, presenting the reader with both the known history—what the general
population knows about Innsmouth—as well as the secret history of the town. As
always with CoC, the secret history is far more interesting, but there is
little here that will surprise anyone who has read Lovecraft’s tale. A
chronology of important events organized by year is also included for quick
reference, as is a sidebar that introduces the Innsmouth Lore skill and
twenty-five rumors (both true and false) about the town.

Welcome to Innsmouth is a mere two and a quarter pages, one of
which is dedicated to new magic spells for the Call of Cthulhu. The rest of the chapter details getting to
Innsmouth, surrounding towns, climate, town government, and crime and
punishment. Although this information is standard for Lovecraft Country
releases, I can’t say that I found this to be especially pertinent information for
running an Innsmouth campaign. The book seems to be in agreement—the crime and
punishment section could be summed up as “outsiders will be eaten if they
attract attention to themselves.” Innsmouth is not the place for bureaucratic
maneuvering or court room drama scenarios. The page on new spells, however, adds
a lot to scenarios set in and about Innsmouth. That’s one of the aspects of Call of Cthulhu that I’ve always
enjoyed: it’s not afraid to introduce new magic as background color, not mystic
power. Why else would the spell “Lobster Charm” (which summons normal lobsters
to nearby waters) be included in a game book?

The Shadow over Innsmouth covers the important Mythos topics
needed to be known in order to properly use the setting. The Innsmouth look,
the Esoteric Order of Dagon, an (ahem) in-depth look at Deep Ones and their
society, and the effects of the Elder Sign on Deep Ones and Innsmouth hybrids
are detailed. A short sidebar provides the reader with the Three Oaths of
Dagon, which adherents to the Esoteric Order must recite as they are initiated
into the different ranks of the religion, and a full-page sidebar lists for the
Keeper additional sources of Innsmouth lore that the investigators might
pursue. The archivist in me always enjoys such sidebars such as this one, which
demonstrates that the best information can only be found in mildewed cellars,
dusty display cases, padded cells, or over tea with little old ladies.

We now reach the chapter that makes up the lion’s share of
the book: A Guidebook to Innsmouth & Environs. As Chaosium has done
with previous Lovecraft Country supplements, this guidebook breaks Innsmouth
down into neighborhoods and provides the Keeper with short descriptions of the
major place of interest and people of note. Game stats, adventure ideas, and
maps are all provided.

The Guidebook is what every fan is waiting to see. As The Shadow over Innsmouth was written
from an outsider’s point of view, the reader never knows for certain what’s
going on behind those shuttered windows and closed doors in Innsmouth and here
Ross has the opportunity to inform him. Unfortunately, the results are neither
surprising or particularly inspired. To be fair, however, given the subject of
the supplement, he can’t stray too far afield for fear of upsetting the
expectations of the audience. We get the expected Deep One hybrids shut away in
attics and basements, the malicious Marsh clan, crumbling factories containing
secrets, the Gilman House Hotel, and Joe Sargent’s bus. The occupants of
Innsmouth are largely dangerous with a few rare allies for the investigators to
befriend.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping for more
here. There are a few dim lights amidst the shadows, notably the U.S. Treasury
agent operating undercover within Innsmouth and the soon-to-be magical feud
between the Marshs and another scion of old Innsmouth, but I can’t say I found
much else that had me enthused. Compared to Return to Dunwich (which
I’ll cover one day), Innsmouth’s inhabitants and (other) secrets didn’t do much
to fan my creative fires.

This is unfortunate. As I mentioned above, most players will
encounter Innsmouth the game setting long after they encounter Innsmouth the
story and thus the catfish is out of the proverbial bag long before they set
foot inside the town limits. They know the source of Innsmouth’s evil, and
although there is some enjoyment to be had blundering about town waiting for
the shoe to drop, there’s no other mystery to sink one’s teeth into. This is
something that Return to Dunwich manages quite adeptly; even if the players have
read “The Dunwich Horror,” the setting provides many more plots, secrets, and
interesting NPCs to encounter than just Old Wizard Whateley and his brood. I
wish Escape from Innsmouth had
modeled itself more along that design than trying to stay within the
established lines of Lovecraft’s story and the various pastiches.

One last gripe about the Guidebook is the art. Most of the
NPCs have a thumbnail illustration and many of them exhibit the “Innsmouth
Look.” Perhaps it’s merely my own preconception, but I always pictured the
inhabitants of Innsmouth who show signs of their mixed heritage to display
features more unsettling or slightly alien than truly monstrous. The
illustrations in Escape from Innsmouth
make the residents—even those who have yet to undergo full transformations—all look
extremely inhuman. Like a trout with a human torso in some cases. I’m uncertain
of who made the call to go this route, but I’m full member of the “Less is More
Club” when it comes to horror and I found these illustrations to be overblown
in most cases.

The Guidebook behind us, we now reach the adventures. There
are two: one is a short introductory investigation that gets the PCs to
Innsmouth and makes them familiar with the town, and the second is a long,
multi-part scenario detailing the government raid.

The introductory adventure, aptly titled “Escape from
Innsmouth,” is a mite atypical for Call of Cthulhu, but looks enjoyable enough.
The investigators get called in to uncover the truth behind a crime committed
in Innsmouth and soon run afoul of the locals, culminating in a race to get out
of town before they end up as human sacrifices. My problem with the
investigation is that it both introduces and ostracizes the characters in a
single scenario. Played as written, the PCs will find themselves persona non grata in Innsmouth and that
effectively makes running any other stories in the town nigh impossible—a very
interesting choice for an introductory scenario, no?

The second, multi-part scenario, “Raid on Innsmouth” looks
much more entertaining. Not only does it give the PCs a chance to be active
participants in Lovecraftian canon (the government raid and the torpedoing of
Devil’s Reef), but it is designed to give each individual PC a chance to shine
as the star of their own mission.

The adventure is written as five, three-part adventures that
include a raid on the Marsh Mansion, an attack on the Esoteric Order of Dagon,
a commando mission into the tunnels beneath to town, the events on board a
Coast Guard cutter assigned to patrol the harbor, and finally, the submarine
mission against Y’ha-nthlei. The missions’ parts are divided up in varying
order and each player’s PC is the “star” of one of those missions. The rest of
the players assume the roles as spear-carriers and helpful NPCs that support
the main PC. This is all unorthodox for adventure design, but also very
entertaining provided your players can dial down their egos to give each other
the spotlight from time to time. And any adventure that has a subtle Blue
Oyster Cult reference is OK in my book, too.

The supplement ends with a section of adventure seeds: germs
of ideas left to the Keeper to elaborate on and spin into full scenarios. They
vary in quality, but many would make for a much better introduction to
Innsmouth than the introductory scenario, especially if you want to be able to
keep the PCs around town longer than a single investigation. Thankfully, there
are also included scenario ideas set after the government raid, allowing the
PCs to keep getting into trouble after the fall of Innsmouth.

I wanted to love Escape
from Innsmouth, I really did. Unfortunately, it is somewhat of a
disappointment. This response is likely colored by my own expectations and
because it is so difficult to find these days, making it more of a quest than a
purchase, but for whatever the reason the supplement largely disappoints.
Unless you are a Call of Cthulhu completionist or a fervent fan of The Shadow over Innsmouth, I cannot in
good conscience suggest you spend $75 to $100 on this book. There are good bits
to it, and a Keeper could put in the intellectual elbow grease to make those
bits truly shine, but he would be better off saving his money and creating the
town from scratch with just Lovecraft’s tale and whatever ideas spring to mind.

We will now leave the stink of rotting fish (not all of
which comes from the wharf) and head down the turnpike towards Arkham, itself.
It might be a long journey to get there, but one day we’ll examine H.P. Lovecraft’s
Arkham before heading off to Dunwich. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there seems
to be a batrachian mob after me…

5 comments:

While I agree on your assessment of the the source material in the book, I will add that the revised version adds more complete adventures as well as a ton of adventure seeds which will allow for more Innsmouth adventuring. They actually have a better introductory adventure and design it so you start with that and play "Escape from Innsmouth" when you are tired of the town, which will eventually point the players to The Raid.

Alas, I only have the original, much-battered first printing of Escape from Innsmouth. With the prices these things go for on the second-hand market, it's likely that that will be the only copy I'll own. I would like to see the revised version on day, but in the meanwhile I'll take your word on its improvement over the original.

I do own "Dark Corners of the Earth" and enjoyed it. What I could complete in it anyway. The Innsmouthians kept killing me as I tried to escape the Gilman Hotel and I never worked up the patience to overcome that roadblock.

Who's to Blame

Despite having never been a professional adventurer, Michael Curtis has nonetheless deciphered cryptic writings, handled ancient maps and texts, ridden both a camel and an elephant, fallen off a mountain, participated in a mystical rite, and discovered the resting places of lost treasures. He can be contacted at poleandrope @ gmaildotcom